... Perhaps you might be able to (in my case, during the last decade): Win a Palm Pilot, a 27" television, an iPod, $250.00 cash, a Samsung Galaxy 10.1; not to mention occasionally the free food and alcohol (if that's your cup o' tea). Best done when you're underemployed, having a lot of free time.

A bunch of companies in the same industry getting together at a convention centre to show off their new products to the general public, and to each other. Occasionally, there are lectures. Comicon, Home and Garden Show, Consumer Electronics show, etc, are all trade shows.

A bunch of companies in the same industry getting together at a convention centre to show off their new products to the general public, and to each other. Occasionally, there are lectures. Comicon, Home and Garden Show, Consumer Electronics show, etc, are all trade shows.

You forgot the part about there being lots of drinking and other extra-curricular activities.

you go there to collect swag and as an excuse to get tickets to some nice metropolitan city to booze with your friends who also manage to do the same. sometimes it gives a nice glimpse of which companies and types of things people are dumping money into as well. so it's like a holiday that your employer pays.

and very rarely you'll get technical insight and run into tech you wouldn't otherwise bump into that interests you. but that's very rarely.

none of this applies if you're a booth monkey in the booth cage. then it's like working in retail.

It's a place where you go and meet peers in the industry and learn about new and emerging technologies. At least, that's what I take away from Cisco Live!. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong...

Most trade shows are a bit of the above, a bit of partying, and a bit of theater. My old manager viewed Cisco Live! as more of a learning opportunity with a little bit of fun thrown in. My new manager views Cisco Live! as nothing but a marketing boondoggle with no redeeming features at all.

My thought is that what you get out of a trade show is up to you. You can sign up for seminars and learn stuff, you can party the whole time, or you can do a mixture of both...

Pretty much this.
The only relevant shows to my industry are held in other countries, and my boss won't send anyone below executive level. I certainly can't afford the trip + registration fees out of my own pocket.

I'm always offered to go, represent the company I'm working at, and do a brief afterwards.... but as I'm a contractor, it's very rare that they'll also offer to pay me for those days.

If I'm not going to get paid to go, then I'm not going. I'll always find out any useful info sooner or later, so it's not like I'm missing out on too much.

I'm a contractor, and fly myself down to the trade shows representing myself, rather than the company I currently contract to. Gotta rub shoulders with like-minded people, sink a few beers, eat some good food and (most importantly) catch up with what's happening in the field.

I'm a contractor, and fly myself down to the trade shows representing myself, rather than the company I currently contract to. Gotta rub shoulders with like-minded people, sink a few beers, eat some good food and (most importantly) catch up with what's happening in the field.

Since you're going to the show of your choice, it makes sense. But I think the difference between yours and GP's points is GP is asked to go to trade shows of the employer's choice, not his own. The GP's kind of shows probably cater to the employer's customers, not necessarily the employee's potential contracts/clients. I.e. the company's field, not yours.

Maybe your company sells gas pumps, so you're asked to go to a convenience store show or a retail petroleum show. Perhaps you design embedded software. The potential clients there are probably gonna just be your current client's competitors and probably not the snack food companies or canopy builders, etc. Maybe your company does security related electronics. The prison show you attend might have a couple other alarm/surveillance/etc. firms there, but also floor tile manufacturers, steel toilet makers, uniform suppliers, food services, etc.

So if you go on your own dime, your way is the way to go. If you're asked to do what the GP is, attend company's show at personal expense, it's probably not worth it. I'd do whatever I could to get out of it, including pointing out that someone's got to hold down the fort while the rest of the department is out -- emergencies come up, you know?

You get the write off only if you itemize deductions. If your other "Schedule A" deductions ( charitable donations, medical expenses etc.) plus the trip expenses is smaller than the standard deduction, it is no use.

You get the write off only if you itemize deductions. If your other "Schedule A" deductions ( charitable donations, medical expenses etc.) plus the trip expenses is smaller than the standard deduction, it is no use.

If you are successful contractor, in a state that has income tax, you will be itemizing. State income taxes are deductible from Federal income tax. Above a certain income threshold, state income tax will exceed the standard deduction all by itself. In the 90's in California, this was about 60K. I don't know what is today. Since then, my good years have been way over and my bad years have been way under.

I'm not sure if the term "trade show" is intended to cover them also, but imo professional/practitioner conferences are better than trade shows for that kind of thing. For example, in the game industry, compare something like the Game Developer's Conference (developer-oriented) to E3 (a classic product-focused trade show).

I'm a digital design engineer. When I'm working, there's no time for trade shows.

When I'm not working, I go to any relevant trade show I can get into for free. They are important networking opportunities, they keep me a little more engaged, and they are mildly informative. I have not directly scored a job this way but I have from single vendor events that you generally find out about through trade shows.

The Internet will never substitute for getting your hands on a product and trying it out yourself. Some things can be shipped for demos, but for the show I have attended (Winter NAMM), it would be highly impractical and in some cases impossible to distribute demo units to everyone who wants to try them out. It makes a lot more sense to set up once a year and let everyone come together.

The coolest thing I got to try out at Winter NAMM 2010 wasn't even for sale by anyone at the show. One of the exhibitors had brought along his personal Tubax [wikipedia.org] and was giving demonstrations as well as letting people play it (on the stand -- it's not like you'd WANT to pick this thing up). I was lucky enough to have brought a baritone saxophone mouthpiece and reed and didn't have to play the owner's or borrow one from the booth I was representing. I found that while it is an interesting instrument and incredibly well-made, it's not something I would particularly want to buy. It is NOT a straight substitute for a contrabass saxophone. Mostly, it just hits a wall volume-wise somewhere around a strong mf. Any attempt to play louder than that just caused the tone to break up. I thought this might have been because I was using a setup not well-suited to the horn, but I have since received confirmation from other people who have rented or owned them that it's not just MY problem. They just don't like to be played loud.

This is not something you will ever be able to find out firsthand from any amount of electronic conferencing. Thus, certain types of trade shows are not particularly in danger.

For that ONE PRODUCT, perhaps. And that assumes you trust my judgment and that of others. Maybe YOU have a mouthpiece/reed combo that is not subject to this issue. Some other sources say "metal mouthpieces will do this" -- and I note that both the one i brought and the one the owner normally uses are metal. However, I know mine at least is a fairly voluminous mouthpiece on the inside, and it is construction with a small chamber (not material) that makes most metal mouthpieces so bright and cutting. There are plastic mouthpieces just as incisive, like the Rico Metalite, and the Saxscape Downtown. (I own one of the latter, and have owned a couple of the former.)

But how would you go about finding out whether the horns at the Cecilio booth were worthwhile? My personal experience with the brand has been EXTREMELY mixed. I have a piccolo of theirs that is absolute crap, a complete waste of $200. When I played the bari at their booth, it too was absolute crap, and I said so (yet they still tried to sell it to me on the spot). However, I had come to the booth to try out the Sax Partner (basically a sound-insulated hard case with hand holes, so you can practice nearly silently), and it wasn't crap at all. In fact, but for one (fixable) design flaw, I was rather impressed with it. Possibly more surprisingly, I also liked the Cecilio-branded horn inside of it for the demo. It wasn't a GREAT horn, but it really wasn't bad at all. I was not really any happier with the Aizen I played an hour later that costs five times as much.

I also played a bari of the brand name "Ten-on" which was made in Vietnam, and was quite impressed. I also played some of their flutes, with varied results (some I liked a lot, one I totally hated). The Taiwanese company owners were personally present, not mere sales drones, and it was pretty apparent they have their supply chain issues more firmly in control than their mainland China counterparts. The M-22 bari at the Rheuben Allen booth was expensive (though I understand they cut list prices more than most), but it was a very good instrument. I also got to meet a certain personality in the sax-building world (with the initials "SG") who was amusing and knowledgeable, though I still don't think I'd buy anything from him personally. Another (Oleg) was arrogant, but tolerable in the short time I had to deal with him -- just long enough to get a turn on the Tubax, which was stationed in his booth though it belonged to someone else.

I also ran into a former bandmate, and we planned to get together after the close of the show but he got sidetracked by security for having insufficient documentation of some items he had bought and eventually I had to go on without him.

All this happened in a single day, and I spent more time at the booth that issued me the pass (acting like I worked for them, since I supposedly did) than I did roaming the floors. I met famous and less-famous but still interesting people that way too. Good luck getting an equivalent experience without just BEING THERE, and there's plenty I left out.

But the "Never" group is not interesting for the owners of/. (and their clients) anyway, so that has been left out. Just trolling... am I?

Someone pointed out something similar to this on another poll a few weeks ago---something about the polls sense having the feel of being developed by the cold corporate hands of consumerism. I originally gave it little thought until now; seeing this poll and the recent permanent addition of two more cookie files to/. has me thinking otherwise.

Well, starting from the understanding that I can't force anyone to believe anything they don't want to... No, you'renotrite:)

We get some polls from readers (who are bright enough to re-purpose the submissions form for it -- one day, I hope we'll get a better / more appropriate submission form for polls, but for now that's it, and we always like poll submissions. Submit! Submit!), as well as some reader-submitted poll *ideas* provided without answers, just topics. Others, we (the handful of editors) generally come up through brainstorming, whether in our jabber channel or just when the coffee stirs a few neurons together.

So far, and cross fingers that it remains true, the NEW CORPORATE OVERLORDS haven't said Boo to any of the editors about their favorite Linux distro, least-favorite naughty words, what they eat for breakfast in Idaho (though I suspect potatoes are a local favorite), or what they want in polls.

(When I wrote this poll, btw, I was just thinking about what shows I might be likely to get to this year; CES is always fascinating, SXSW is just down the street for me, Comic-Con in Baltimore I think would be more interesting than the big West Coast ones, etc. So... maybe not a very strong brainstorm, but that's about the size of it.)

Got more poll ideas? Please -- click that "Submit" button on the front page, and let us know:)

I've been to a couple professional conferences in my career, and the occasional fan convention, but an industry show dedicated to people trying to sell stuff? Nope.

Frequently, but only for trades related with my hobbies, not my career (e.g. get some fancy router bits [wikipedia.org] at discounted prices - it makes sense to get in contact with people that sell stuff).

Believe it or not, the more technical "trade shows" are quite useful in that regard.

Doesn't even have to be a technical trade show. I attended G2E last year and we found a printing technology we hadn't found online (inexpensive hidden window reveal). I was able to talk to an engineer about interfaces to the printer and how formatting is handled (as well as the other company that makes the paper). I also got to chat with the Unity3D guys (this was prior to a linux release and they confirmed they did have it running on Linux for a particular customer) and talk to some guys about modifying an automated ball caller for our uses. This was at a conference/expo that is mainly slot machines and guys walking around in suits staring at the scantily clad promo girls (I think one company actually hired Penthouse models).

I honestly didn't think I'd get anything useful from going (a hangover at best), but that was because of what it looks like on the surface. The business guys also made some connections we wouldn't have made had we not attended.

I am too and I haven't been to any in over 2 years. Last one was some shitty regional vendor expo. My employer has been really tight with travel budget lately while at the same time prodding me to do "professional development" activities. I'd love to finish out my Crestron cert. but that's several days of classes in another city (mostly for stuff I've already figured out on my own in the meantime). Oh well.

I try to go to the Outdoor Adventure Show every year. Each time I go I see some new gadget or idea, or place to go. Plus, if you are there at the end of the trade show, you can pick up some heavily discounted stuff.

There are two benefits for me for going to trade shows:
(1) Learning quickly what's new in the trade. In a good trade show, you can get a good demonstration of a new product, and sometimes you can even talk to one of the developers.
(2) Networking. I often run into former colleagues at trade shows, which gives us opportunities to update one another and re-establish contacts.

My job is about software development, just call me a programmer. Last time I went to a trade show I learned that some 500 new acronyms had been invented. By now they must be out of fashion again because I never hear about them anymore. Sadly, in my area of expertise not a lot of groundbreaking stuff is happening. Sure, there are many who pretend that they have the new golden recipe that makes the new software easy to write, with 0% defects etc. In reality there's always some point where the dirty work has to be done, the result is prone to bugs and is hard to maintain.

I'm a bit fed up with these shows promoting extensions to bad management and recycling of meaningless mumbo jumbo.

Yep, it just depends on what you are doing. The "business" ones are particularly bad, especially on the management side of things. It is just a bunch of people in suits bragging about the things they've done that aren't all that impressive. Some of the free stuff they hand out is nice I guess.

I have done a lot of the shows as a presenter/demo jock for a few software firms. Went to one smallish "local" trade show and one of the other attendees looked familiar. Comparing resumes, we had met up number of times when both of us had held several different positions with several different firms. The same players do a lot of musical chairs.

Why would anyone go to a trade show?* It's me, going out of my way to be advertised to. I can think of few things less enjoyable.

Conferences on the other hand, I love. A chance to talk with the people who actually made the stuff the trade shows are advertising â" That's incredibly valuable and well worth the time and effort.

*The most common excuse I see is that it's a free trip to Las Vegas or somewhere, which is why they hold them there and not Des Moines. But if that's the cost of a trip, I'm not sure it's worth it. (Then again I live in my favorite city. Traveling out of it is a step down.)

its a market that you buy goods from, not a show to see the most recent advances in agricultural technology / methods. You buy tomatoes, not see the latest bug resistant breed of tomato plants and the latest gadget to get the most out of your harvest without bruising while increasing productivity by 1.72%

I generally attend a couple of conferences a year, and try to present some of my work at least at one event (I'm out of academia so publishing is not a priority).It's a great way of keeping in touch with the latest bits of research, but mostly it's about the networking.

And the fact that some conferences are organized in beautiful places does not hurt!

Being from the countryside in Ireland it would be a long way to travel to one and I can't think of a good reason why I'd go.

Think of car trade shows - a manufacturer shows up and says "here is a half working prototype of what we could make if we put our minds to it, a beautifully shaped fully transparent hydrogen gas powered plug-in hybrid with a 9-speed manual gearbox. but nahhhhhhh, it will never see production, you can buy this heap of shit instead (sales rep points to said heap of shit)"

I did COMDEX several times, once with an exhibitor pass working with Team OS/2. If the show had hung around, I'd probably have done it at least a few more times in the intervening years. I did a Linux expo in Denver back in the late '90's, as well. Speaking of which, whatever happened to the Linux beer walk? I tried to get the manager to sign off for that one and it would have been the high point of my career if I'd managed it, but sadly she didn't see the business value of it. I'd hoped to try again another time, but have not seen another one advertised since then.

Friend of mine runs an internet sex toy shop and mentioned one day that there's a sex toy tradeshow in Vegas every year. That's now on my bucket list, to attend just once before I die.

Between '89 to '95, I went to multi-dozen trade shows. Four a year sometimes. COMDEX, CES, E3.

I stood around in my cheap suit, in horrible dress shoes, and show off CD-ROM multimedia software.

It got a little better after other, larger companies started putting show personnel in casual-dress uniforms. Golf shirts with logos, khakis, black sneakers, that kind of thing.

What made it all incredibly frustrating is that, while I was working in "high tech" (I mean, gosh, multimedia CD-ROM), it was all about selling and sales and making deals. There was no real interest in the technology, and what it could do, and how it worked.

I eventually got my ass in gear and went to grad school so I could actually work on a development team. While I miss the travel sometimes, I'm so glad to be through with trade shows.

... was during my dotcom days for Internet World in Los Angeles/L.A. I also just found out that I could go to E3 with my work proof even though it is not work related. DOH! Too bad I am not into gaming anymore.:(

When I happen upon one that might be interesting, and I have time to waste.Might be related to the fact that I never hear of trade shows where I live, the only trade shows I'm aware of are two countries further.

(replying to self to add)That is, if any of the following can be considered trade shows:- Pasar Malam [wikipedia.org]- Spiel [internatio...ieltage.de]- Spellen spektakel [spellenspektakel.nl]- Book fair [boekenfestijn.com]

If none of these count, then never. And the last one is the only regular staple nowadays.Adding this because most comments seem to focus on IT/techy shows -- there's more out there than just computers!

I've attended trade shows as a booth droid and an attendee. Every one, whether "technical" or not, was nothing but marketing spin. The litmus test? Ask a booth droid what's the worst thing about their product/ technology/ service. If it's anything other than an honest answer, it's marketing spin and the trade show is about marketing and sales.

OTC (Offshore Tech Conference - oil industry Christmas) once a year satisfies my trade show itch. It's got everything you could want - competitors screaming across their booths at one another while you/popcorn, the Chinese and the Dutch nearly going to war with one another over whose booth space is where, free swag out the wazoo. Also, enough booth babes that every strip club, brothel, and Hooters in the greater Houston area has to shut down for the duration for lack of employees (and few people get more desperate than girls who know nothing about engineering trying to sell complex equipment to people who don't speak English. Got three numbers last year).

OTC (Offshore Tech Conference - oil industry Christmas) once a year satisfies my trade show itch. It's got everything you could want - competitors screaming across their booths at one another while you/popcorn, the Chinese and the Dutch nearly going to war with one another over whose booth space is where, free swag out the wazoo. Also, enough booth babes that every strip club, brothel, and Hooters in the greater Houston area has to shut down for the duration for lack of employees (and few people get more desperate than girls who know nothing about engineering trying to sell complex equipment to people who don't speak English. Got three numbers last year).

Have not been to E3, CES, etc. I can only hope they're as fun.

Oh man I loved OTC. I only went one time when I worked for the American Bureau of Shipping but boy we had a good time. It was surprising to me that alcohol was so hard to find, but eventually we found some Russian pipe pig company that had a cooler of beer. Even if you aren't in the oil and gas industry, every engineer should go to this conference if you are in Houston or nearby.

I always get invited by my friends go each year to the IBC, the International Broadcasting Conference.

Quite nice, seeing new things, last year I saw a 3D movie projected at an effective 12 ft/lamber; A DLP projector which was lit using lasers which produces a lot more light than a bulb (it was a loud projector, we could hear it because it was set up on the balcony instead of in the projector booth, probably because of the size of the prototype).

And many people at that conference know me because I developed Boom Recorder an audio field recording application, which I think is quite cool.

It seems like the ones I would want to go to are held on the US West Coast or overseas. If one was in driving distance (4 hours away) I might go to one. Most computer shows in the US are in Las Vegas or in California somewhere.

as my job doesn't involve haul pack trucks or horizontal drilling rigs the closest relevant trade shows are in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, some 3,000 klm + away.
so between 3 days to a week away from the desk, airfares, hotels bills, and entrance fees once every two years is about all I can manage

And see new games of course. I spent a good $1,000 on new gear that I carried home on my motorcycle:) Certainly I could have simply purchased them later from my FLGS except that they don't carry the Judge Dredd books from Mongoose (for example).

On a good side, a new FLGS has opened within a 15 minute walk and they're stocking the games I'm interested in.

I was on the IBM stand at CeBIT for four years in a row. That was a small nightmare - 8 day show, one day build and one day teardown. It was good for weight loss, and pretty much nothing else. Nowadays I attend EHI Live in the UK, and usually another show in London as the mood takes me. In these austere times, attendance at shows is 'self-funded' so one naturally goes only to shows that attract one's eye. The Erotica Show 2012 was in London a couple of weeks ago - unfortunately missed that due to my going to the 'Lone Worker Safety 2012' show.

My understanding is that, in everyday language, "frequent" means "often" but "regular" means a recurring event with equal spacing - says nothing about how often the event occurs.
An event can be frequent but not regular, or regular but not frequent.

The trade shows that would really be relevant for me, as a network administrator, are mostly held on the coasts. So it would be a thousand-mile trip each way to the east coast or closer to twice that far to the left coast. A trip of that magnitude would blow my employer's travel budget for all employees combined for decades.

I do occasionally go to trade shows related to my employer's industry, e.g., held by OLC. Those can be an hour away or less.

New administrative regulations forbid attendance for anyone but the most senior (or politically appointed) scientists at anything which resembles a conference. Given that the way government scientists get a lot of their work done is by sponsoring conferences in areas we're interested in, this makes our job pretty hard.

I've never been to one. They look like pure marketing to me.
Local users groups on the other hand are fantastic! I've gone to groups in Portland revolving around Python programming and Selenium web automation and met lots of awesome people who are my peers in the industry. Great way to find out about jobs.

I go to NAVC (North American Veterinary Conference) each year and do consulting for one of the biggest clients that has a booth there. We make theirs a high tech booth that in the following year every other booth tries to copy (and generally fails) while we are on the next big thing. Our client often spends 500k-1mil on their booth.